Issue 18 marks the revitalization of The Unspeakable Oath, originally published by Pagan Publishing throughout the 1990′s. It is a magazine dedicated to role-playing in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos with a primary concentration on the tried and true Call of Cthulhu. Issue 18 is a mixture of scenarios, scenario seeds, and source material with a focus on using it in your scenarios. This magazine is awesome, and after reading one issue, you will probably be hooked for future issues.

OVERALL

The Unspeakable Oath is a HUGE value for what you pay. For only $9.99 print or $5.24 PDF, you get two fully-developed scenarios (one is an actual scenario while the other is a developed cult with scenario basics), two fully-developed scenario frameworks, and a host of quick presentations that provide scenario hooks and potential plot points. Not only do you get a lot of Call of Cthulhu content for such a great price, but you get a real variety of content that can be used in a number of ways. This is a truly excellent way to support a game system, providing the players and Keepers with hours and hours of horror investigation.

RATINGS

Publication Quality: 9 out of 10
The Unspeakable Oath is a wonderfully put-together magazine with a great layout and format, albeit with a lot of spacing between paragraphs. There are lots of great illustrations and I even enjoy seeing the advertisements. Understanding that some people are annoyed by advertisement, I find them very helpful to see what products are out there and who publishes them. This is backed-up by the contained reviews as well.

Storyline: 10 out of 10
All four feature articles contain some type of storyline, especially the scenario. Each storyline is extremely well-developed for use within an investigation-styled game considering its presentation and development. These feature articles are augmented by a host of smaller pieces that can be added to many games’ storyline, offering alternate avenues for the investigators to explore; possibly taking the scenario in a different direction.

Desire to Play/Use: 10 out of 10
Considering the number of possible scenarios that can be created with the various pieces in addition to the fully-developed scenario, Keepers should be able to find at least one if not a handful of things to throw at their players. The content is developed in a way that makes it a very valuable product in terms of usability and desirability. And even if the included scenario is not used, one could easily combine various bits-and-pieces from the magazine to construct their own scenario.

Overall: 10 out of 10
Any lover of Call of Cthulhu should consider The Unspeakable Oath (issue 18 and others), especially Keepers. There is so much inside these pages that you can’t help but find something very useful, and at such a great price. After reading one issue, there’s a chance you’ll get completely hooked on it and want more.

High-quality content from Arc Dream, as always. Most of the magazine comprises of items, people, or concepts that you can drop into your Cthulhu-esque game with little trouble. The highlight of this issue is definitely Black Sunday, though. With creepy real-life history alongside creepy Cthulhu Mythos stuff, the Dust Bowl era is a section of history ripe for the game mining. The Chapel of Contemplation is a nice article as well, expanding on the Call of Cthulhu scenario and providing a structure for a campaign, as well as helping the reader to formulate their own scenarios.

How much fun can it be to thwart evil only to be eaten alive or driven insane for your efforts? As it turns out, quite a bit. Cthulhu fans everywhere rejoice in the return of a quarterly magazine dedicated to their favorite tentacular genre, Unspeakable Oath.

The periodical publication is overloaded with material that takes a while digest. It’s not that the 80+ pages couldn’t be read quickly. it’s just that you’ll want to stop ever so often to contemplate ways to work the material into your campaign. WARNING: The Oath is not a light read.

Four Tales of Terror by John Scott Tynes, Pat Harrigan, Monte Cook, and Nick Grant give scenario ideas for Keepers. They are skeletal, game system agnostic, and provide great adventure seeds. Each tale provides the initial scene or adventure concept then offers three different adventure paths. The Oath also contains a fully-fleshed, 16 page CoC adventure set in the 1920s Louisiana swamp titled “Dog Will Hunt.”

The Oath contains information on ancient tomes and scrolls for your campaign as well as a malevolent CD set for modern campaigns. The Arcane Artifacts section details mythos devices with the history, plot hooks, and CoC statistics for each. The review section contains eight reviews of Cuthy related books, games, and movies.

I found the Tales of Nephren-Ka section to be most interesting. James Haughton did a great job pulling together various historical and fictional references to The Black Pharaoh of ancient Egypt. This worshipper of Nyarlathotep occurs in H. P Lovecraft’s original works, is later embellished by other Mythos writers, and is used in several adventures from Chaosium and others. The article does a ‘deep dive’ on the legendary figure citing real mythical (ironic, I know) texts giving great adventure hooks, spells, and artifacts as well as the Black Pharaoh’s place in history.

Another great historical article by C.A. Suleiman and George Holochwost describes the effects of the dust storms of 1935 on the Southwest. The worst natural disaster in American history helped create the Dust Bowl encompassing Oklahoma, Southeastern Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and North Texas. The article details the effects of Black Sunday in CoC game terms and provides a number of adventure possibilities in a world where threats like Hastur, Nyarlathotep, and Shub-Niggurath are real.

The Oath is back and better than ever. The quarterly is packed with information to spice up your existing Cthulhu game or can be the source of great campaign ideas to start a new adventure in Lovecraftian horror. The contributors' love of the Mythos shows on every content-loaded page. For $7, there’s hardly a better deal for Chtulhu fans.